s, turning pale.

I did not answer.

"Sounds like burying some one," he whispered. "Don't say poor old
Blacksmith has gone?"

"No no," I said. "I know what it is. Wait till I've told you all I
have to tell, and then you'll know too."

He looked at me wonderingly, and I completed my account of the scene in
the black-hole place.

"Oh, I see," he cried; "it was the Chinaman?"

I nodded carelessly, but I felt more serious than ever before in my
life, at this horrible sequel to a fearful scene.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

A DISAPPOINTMENT.

"Very jolly for you," said Barkins, as we cast anchor off Tsin-Tsin a
couple of mornings later. "You'll be going ashore and enjoying
yourself, while I'm condemned to hobble on deck with a stick."

"I say, don't grumble," I cried. "Look how beautiful the place seems in
the sunshine."

"Oh yes, it looks right enough; but wait till you go along the narrow
streets, and get some of the smells."

"Hear that, Smithy?" I said to our comrade, who was lying in his berth.
"Grumbles because he can't go ashore, and then begins making out how
bad it is. How about the fox and the grapes?"

"If you call me fox, my lad, I'll give you sour grapes when I get
better. Where's your glass?"

I took down my telescope, adjusted it for him, and pushed his seat
nearer to the open window, so that he could examine the bright-looking
city, with the blue plum-bloom tinted mountains behind covered with
dense forest, and at the shipping of all nations lying at the mouth of
the river.

"S'pose that tower's made of crockery, isn't it?" said Barkins, whose
eye was at the end of the telescope.

I looked at the beautiful object, with its pagoda-like terraces and
hanging bells, and then at the various temples nestling high up on the
sides of the hills beyond.

"I say," said Smith, "can't you tell Mr Reardon--no, get the doctor to
tell him--that I ought to be taken ashore for a bit to do me good?"

"I'll ask him to let you go," I said; but Smith shook his head, and then
screwed up his white face with a horrible look of disgust.

"Oh, what a shame!" he cried. "He gets all the luck;" for a message
came for me to be ready directly to go ashore with the captain in the
longboat.

It meant best uniform, for the weather was fine, and I knew that he
would be going to pay a visit to some grand mandarin.

I was quite right; for, when I reached the deck a few minutes later,
there was Mr Brooke with the boa